Rating: 
Summary: New York Porn
Review: THe only reason to read this book is to soak up the street names, professions and pastimes of contemporary Woody Allen-style New Yorkers.The male narrator has no discernible maleness or individuality about him. He is clearly spewing the words of a too-serious, portentous woman writer. The narrative has scarcely any plot until late in the book, when it suddenly turns into an overly dramatic and cliched imitation of a second-rate thriller. How did this book get published in hardback?
Rating: 
Summary: A Rare Sincerity
Review: The preciously genuine voice of this novel appealled to me deeply. There was no question of the suspension of disbelief. Characters are solid and doubtless, and well within our grasp. New York's art scene and all of the important existential aspects of life are present in their full glory, and Siri Hustvedt presents them with an intimate, honest, emotionally intelligent grace.
I'm confident in recommending this novel. I'm going to read it again and give it residency in my permanent collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent but unexpected
Review: The thing is, Siri Hustvedt's first novel, The Blindfold, was so different, so brilliantly dark, and the same went for The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. The darkness is still there in What I Loved, but the intensity has been watered down *a lot*. Here there is more narration than introspection. And after the women of her first two books (slightly neurotic but very interesting), I felt a bit let down by the characters Violet and Erica- it felt like Hustvedt was holding herself back. I thought the book was still very good- stylistic, well-executed. The story is engaging, this time more 'familial', and full of speculative thoughts on relationships and love. It is also especially nice to see Hustvedt come back to discussing, through Bill's character, the topic of painting.. which she talks about with amazing intelligence and flair.
Rating:
Summary: Wow, is this other reviewer wrong ....
Review: This book is excellent. It is true that it is complex .... lives over several decades tend to get that way. It's a book about realtionships, love, family, loss and regret. The reader feels like they are in the same room with the characters and it makes you laugh and makes you cry.
I seriously think the other reviewer read a different book! The city does not feature heavily in every description. It's a book about PEOPLE .... thankfully.
Read it -- her voice is strong and true and you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Sparkling prose with emotion to boot
Review: This book knocked my socks off -- literally and figuratively. It is a story to crawl into bed with, not because it is pleasant, or happy, or overly touching, but because it is a read that plays on your heart while appealing to your intellect. It is a book to love, a smart book, a novel that ponders the meaning of various types of art forms without bending to over-intelletualism or pretension. But is also uncommonly suspense-filled, considering that it comes from a writer with great literary ambition. Siri Hustvedt has taken on what few others have tried -- setting a modern novel with a backdrop of the New York intellectual scene of the late 70's through the 80's. He main characters are writers and artists, New Yorkers through and through whose public lives form on a thin red line to their private ones. And ultimately, as with most people, the private lives are the most interesting. This very private story centers around Bill, an artist, and Leo, the narrator, an art critic and friend who truly admires Bill's work. The lives of the two become intertwined when geographical closeness leads to a friendship as hard as a rock against time. Throw in a couple of intelligent wives, some children with their own cumbersome problems, and you have a group of people struggling with life and loving each other through it all. There is a plot twist in this book that utterly changes the direction of the story. It might bother some -- I for one found that it acted like a catalyst propelling me to the book's conclusion. Final judgement: without a doubt the best book I've read in months.
Rating:
Summary: Sparkling prose with emotion to boot
Review: This book knocked my socks off -- literally and figuratively. It is a story to crawl into bed with, not because it is pleasant, or happy, or overly touching, but because it is a read that plays on your heart while appealing to your intellect. It is a book to love, a smart book, a novel that ponders the meaning of various types of art forms without bending to over-intelletualism or pretension. But is also uncommonly suspense-filled, considering that it comes from a writer with great literary ambition. Siri Hustvedt has taken on what few others have tried -- setting a modern novel with a backdrop of the New York intellectual scene of the late 70's through the 80's. He main characters are writers and artists, New Yorkers through and through whose public lives form on a thin red line to their private ones. And ultimately, as with most people, the private lives are the most interesting. This very private story centers around Bill, an artist, and Leo, the narrator, an art critic and friend who truly admires Bill's work. The lives of the two become intertwined when geographical closeness leads to a friendship as hard as a rock against time. Throw in a couple of intelligent wives, some children with their own cumbersome problems, and you have a group of people struggling with life and loving each other through it all. There is a plot twist in this book that utterly changes the direction of the story. It might bother some -- I for one found that it acted like a catalyst propelling me to the book's conclusion. Final judgement: without a doubt the best book I've read in months.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent men, their work, their families
Review: This exceptional novel is about two men, an art historian and an artist, their work and their families. It is intelligently and sensitively drawn, pulling together concepts of art making with real life and its trials.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent observations for a very specific audience.
Review: This is a novel about the arts, their place in society and the role that criticism plays in the art world. If you are not interested in these things, than the focus of this narration will seem oddly skewed. For instance, the odd characters in this novel react to the mutilation of an admired painting with sincere heartfelt outrage. Their reaction to news of the mutilation and murder of a living boy later in the story is more ambivalent. The author is very much in control of this material however, and carefully draws her reader's attention to consider the parallels and distinctions between these two situations. Ultimately, this novel is a condemnation of the developments in painting, poetry, and literature that occurred in the 1970's and 1980's, particularly the rise of criticism or "deconstruction" and the disintegration of the creative impulse that this rise triggered. Hustvedt brings into vivid focus a group of exquisitely sensitive, self-absorbed artists and critics in the first part of this novel. The entire first third of the book is devoted to making the reader familiar with the peculiar values of this world. These are the people who frequent the trendy galleries of Manhattan and teach at the prestigious universities. Our narrator, Leo, and his wife are professors who have the luxury to spend their days analyzing and deconstructing works of art. The artist that Leo discovers is soon free to spend his days constructing little boxes with symbolic things inside of them. That these characters all take these activities very seriously does not strike the reader as remarkable at all while we are in the universe of Part One. In that universe, these are serious activities indeed. I liked Part One. I recognized these people and relished the accurate particulars of this kind of life. I was dismayed therefore when Part Two opened up with the death of a child. Oh no! Not this again! But not to worry, we are not headed toward an Oprah book club selection. Actually, the death of the art critic's child is foreshadowed in Part One. He is just a little too delicate, a little to precious for life. His death, however, sets up Leo to become involved with the artist's living creation who turns out to be a monster. As Leo is drawn out of his sheltered idyllic universe into the places where most of life swarms, we begin to see how effete and sterile his own world has become. There is a very funny scene where Leo finds himself in the Opryland Hotel in Nashville of all places. Here is a man whose sensibilities recoil from the slightest whisper of bad taste. His encounter with Opryland completely disorients and finally disables him, so that he must retreat to New York City and take some tranquilizers. It is a little subtle, but the humor is clearly intended. Hustvedt's novel gives narrative shape to the collapse of creativity under the weight of a particularly pernicious style of criticism. This it does excellently.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: This is a superb book which is continuing to resonate for me, hauntingly, several weeks after reading it. Whilst measured and calm, the writing is extraordinarily skillful, passionate and affecting. One critical moment had me in tears while riding the tram to work. The plot is more-than sufficiently described in the editorial reviews here and does not, I think, need recounting. What I want to stress is the simply beautiful way in which Hustvedt explores and illuminates relationships. Between adults, friends, lovers, husbands and wives. Between children. Between parent and child...between parent and a memory of a child. No novel I have read recently comes closer to echoing my own experiences of life, love ... the whole damn thing. For me, now, "What I Loved" is the best book I have read in years. I had not heard of Hustvedt until this novel was published and I am now eagerly looking forward to reading her earlier work.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully crafted
Review: This is by far her best novel to date - hugely ambitious, and the care put in to the lengthy (somtimes arduous) exposition magnifies 10 fold the emotional impact of the later sections. It's a mistake not to read this book - this year.
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